the real thing.

 

This is not the real thing, this is our first ever gluten-free pasta (corn meal, store-bought). Not bad at all, it's a Romanian brand called Sam Mills (The Corn Master), I think it was €1.89/500g at the Dirk (interestingly, beating AH to the gluten-free punch). The texture was extremely pasta-like, the taste was a tiny bit on the sweet side but in an OK way. This is their penne with more home-dried tomatoes (2.5 hours @ 100C), arugula, gorgonzola, butter, and a little pecorino, an idea worth doing again I thought.

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penne with oven-dried cherry tomatoes, arugula, and gorgonzola. 

250g dried gluten-free penne
2 tbsp butter
two big handfuls arugula, chopped roughly
16 oven-dried cherry tomatoes
3 tbsp gorgonzola
salt
pepper
grated pecorino for serving

Serves 2.

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dromenland.

Went to Ikea today, which I shamefully continue to love because it's so cheap exploitative of cheap third-world labor and because it all seems so smartly designed.

Home improvement goes hand in hand with sustenance, or some other better segue, and one of the things I like about Ottolenghi's Plenty is that it's full of things you've never tasted before. I've probably mentioned this before, but whenever there's a "home improvement day" around Apartment 100M, I typically end up shopping and cooking because I have very few other practical skills unless (joke to be inserted here).

So today while El Carote Negro assembled budget-friendly Ikea shelving, I assembled Ottolenghi's reasonably budget-friendly du puy lentil salad (with gorgonzola and oven-dried tomatoes). It was budget-friendly because the lentils were already here and plus there was a pile of tomatoes sitting around that was about to head south. All I really needed was a sliver of gorgonzola (€1.79/100gr at De Avondmarkt).

As idiosyncratic and interesting as Plenty is, you still have to keep an eye on it sometimes: this recipe called for a bunch of herbs, including lots of dill, and frankly I think Mr. Lenghi sometimes tries to push dill into a couple of places it doesn't really need to be (with equally assertive flavors like gorgonzola for example). So we added the chives the recipe called for and withheld the dill to be served on the side so we could taste it just to make sure we were right in omitting it, and why yes, yes we were.

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some velvet morning.

Last night's dream: I'm stranded on a desert island, and I spend every day trying to (re)arrange grains of sand to represent all of the individual notes on Tangerine Dream's Phaedra album.  I go to sleep, and in the morning the wind has erased the score and I start again.

Today's appetizer experiment: letftover polenta tots with homemade BBQ sauce from the freezer. I still don't think they need a condiment, or if they do this isn't it. It's probably this.

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southwestern polenta tots.

Mara dyed the curtains today, HBF brought over some serious homemade blueberry/lavender pie, and later I tried to make a fancy salad. Of the salad's three elements, the tastiest was something the recipe called "jalapeno-polenta croutons", but which as prepared by me were nothing like croutons at all but rather much more like polenta tots and thus totally delicious if not so so healthy. I ate a flattened one that Mara stepped on, that's how good they were. Jesus look at this pie:

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southwestern polenta tots. 

2 and 3/4 cup half-skim milk

1 tsp salt

1 jalapeno or 2 green Holland chiles, seeded and minced

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 and 1/2 cups cornmeal

a good frying oil
salt and pepper

Make polenta by bringing the milk, chiles and any spices to a full boil and then adding 1 cup of the cornmeal, whisking constantly. Stirring the whole time, cook for three to five minutes, or until the polenta begins to stay pulled away from the sides when you stir it. Pour into some non-stick or lined flattish baking dish and chill for 1 to 4 hours. Remove from fridge, cut into cubes, dredge cubes in the remaining 1/2 cup cornmeal and pan-fry til brown on all sides. Drain, season to taste and serve warm in a context other than a fancy salad, probably with a dipping sauce of some kind. You might look at this recipe and say oooh cheese would be nice here and yeah it probably would but also I really think they don't necessarily need it.

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indian, summer.

After spending the afternoon being clobbered by 130bpm and summery heat, I returnethed home to pretty perfect homemade Indian: updated and awesome paneer jalfrezi; super raita; peshwari naan (not pictured); cardamom rice (underneath); green scatter (of course). Oh yeh and I threw yesterday's curry-roasted cauliflower in there too after warming it up in our newish hand-me-down microwave (newly handed-down, pretty far from new age-wise) for 40 seconds, something I've done in Amsterdam maybe twice in the last twelve years. We haven't owned a microwave since the 1990s, it's still a confounding technology.

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mirtazapine/remeron day 130.

So it's been a while since there's been a medication update, and that's because 1) things have been pretty stable and 2) I've decided I don't want to be on this medication for the rest of my life. The sleeping is still mostly great, pretty much the best I've ever slept in my life, although last night I in fact had a horrible night of sleep, I just felt physically "weird" and my hands kept falling asleep no matter where I put them.

Also my dreams were full of 3) me running around in a videogame subdivision battling king cobras, komodo dragons and African lions, no doubt a side effect of watching Animal Planet on the treadmill at the gym, and 4) an initially very helpful pie/ice cream vendor on a bike with wonderful-looking products who talked to me for some time about exactly what I was looking for in a piece of pie/ice cream, then silently took the $20 bill I offered him and rode off without giving me any pie or ice cream. I'm pretty sure the vendor was King Krule, a pun/irony that I didn't notice until well after I typed the previous sentence.

Regarding 2) above, I feel like things have leveled out to where I understand what this drug is all about, and unfortunately I've decided I can't really deal with the physical weakness, the persistent unignorable sugar cravings and the pretty intractable emotional distance/apathy. Don't get me wrong, the emotional distance was completely necessary at the outset and all in all the past 4.5 months have been an awesome vacation from a few several years of pretty-nihilistic depression, but at the moment I have a hard time really experiencing a complete emotion, mine only seem to go up to 50% or so. And that's a bit depressing (but luckily only 50% depressing ha ha thank you we're here all week).

Thus, my short-term plan is to enlist a brain doctor to gently massage my grey matter, and then taper off of 30mg mirtazapine down to 15mg and see what happens. And for those people who are Googling "mirtazapine/Remeron" and "weight gain/loss": I managed to not gain any weight in four months, but it was a rather unfun effort. The drug definitely wanted me to double in size.

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¿qué pasa?

Que?! What's happening? I can't even remember what I was just typing into the Google Search bar, but the autocomplete for it was "crab scotch egg". Has Google just gotten a whole bunch better? I'm Googling for wonderful things I didn't even know existed (for those of you who may not understand the phrase "crab Scotch egg", it's this).

Actually I do remember what I was Googling, crab and scotch bonnets, because I have some of the latter sitting around waiting to burn the shit out of me.

Above: the chicken phố I made while Mara painted the "living room", not my best effort, but in this kitchen bad phố is pretty much like bad pizza: not really all that bad at all.

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pops.

Dinner over at Megasubtiel, Inc. tonight was mega indeed: cucumber gazpacho; scallops in a lime beurre blanc; Ottolenghi's sweet potato wedges with lemongrass creme fraiche, and VDuck sambal green beans prepared to perfection by the hpoes despite my recipe-writing sabotage. A great menu. Then lemon verbena creme brulee. I'm guessing we'll be stealing all of those recipes, or at least the idea that you can have a lime beurre blanc on the same plate with your sambal green beans and that that is a very good thing.

Re sabotage: tonight while hpoes was cooking the VDuck green beans she said "hey, 150 seems a little low for these," and I then realized that when on this website I say to cook something at 150°C, I really mean "150°C", because "150°C" is what you turn the dial on our oven to when you want to cook something at the highest temperature possible, which is not a precise or predictable temperature, somewhere between 200°C and 230°C. But your ovens probably do what you tell them. I'll try to be more precise moving forward.

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met mate.

Mussels are on sale at the Dirk. €3 for 2kg (that's 4.5 pounds people). Bargain shellfish, you say? Mmmmmm.

Well, I mean, they are homegrown, it's not like we're in Kansas or anything, they're just coming from 100km away in Zeeland. And mussel season officially starts in a couple of weeks, right? So maybe these are just early. In any case, at that price I don't even have to get buy-in from any possible dining companion: I'm having mussels tonight.

Anyway, here's what's happening to them. Hopefully I'll still be here to report back.

AND AFTERWARDS: It's a real shame that this was such a blazingly improvised recipe, b/c these are the best mussels I've had in a long time. Let's hope they were "ok". Here's what I think went in the pot.

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mosselen a la paramaribo.

3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger

1 tsp thyme
1 tsp allspice
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
2 cups boiling water
1/3 of a chicken bouillon cube
1 cup scallions, chopped
1 habanero chile, halved
1 tbsp Surinamese mango chutney (for anyone who's never tasted this, it's very tart and peppery, more like a lime pickle than the gloppy sweet Major Grey stuff)
NO SALT

2 kg mussels, well scrubbed

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro

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poppy.

Above: Shokomonk's white chocolate with poppyseeds. Below: last night's besan-battered Moorish catfish (Spanish + Creole ideas), plus black beans, plus the last dollop of Surinamese hot sambal. It might not look like much, but for me it was a perfect plate of food, with the added bonus that finishing the last of the Surinamese sambal means it's time to try a new one.

local.

Another 90-degree day Friday, so the wisest course of action was going down the street to the park, where we just kind of hung out and read and/or shot the shit. And ate gelato (tiramisu and mocha me, blood orange and caramel moop). And then later a medium friet from the new friet place next to the gelato place, pretty good. I like that they're actually slicing whole potatoes when you walk up to order.

guac guac.

Some things just go together. I have some examples, conveniently pictured above: avocado and shrimp; chorizo and cilantro; grits and scallions. AND, bonus: they all six go great together. This pile o' goodness was engineered by the Mara, it's basically Momofuku's shrimp and grits with: chorizo instead of bacon; no egg; yes guacamole and sour cream. That's right: four sentences, three colons.

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alien love.

Above: yesterday's Vietnamese basil rolls, concocted by Moop, foto by Moop.

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Hmm, I wanted to say something, forgot what it was, totally distracted by trying to determine the gender of my androgynous neighbor across the street who I've never seen before but is totally acting like (OK I've reached a tentative conclusion) she lives there.

My evidence to support this theory (that she lives there) is that she just came to the open window (hers, not mine) carrying a plate of food and a chair, looking very "at home" and is now enjoying the early evening sun while dangling her legs over the windowsill and having dinner.

I'm not normally much of a voyeur really, but at the moment I happen to be sitting at the "dining room" table facing the window and so she is directly in my line of sight. So I can't help noticing that whatever she is eating is posing a real challenge to traditional table manners (although since she's not at a table maybe this is moot): after she sat down, the first time I happened to look up again, she had something roughly the size and shape of a tennis shoe precariously balanced on her fork and was semi-frantically nibbling at the edges of it (I imagine the idea was to reduce its size and thus increase its manageability).

Then when I looked up again two minutes later she was (I'm not kidding) literally putting the plate up to her face and bulldozing the mystery something into her mouth with her fork, for like a minute straight, with not the slightest hint of acknowledgement or awareness that she was in a very visible place. The whole thing was kind of an anti-voyeurism PSA actually.

In the absence of anything else to say, here's a better version of the classic Japanese-American steakhouse salad dressing. Better than this one I mean.

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benihana salad dressing #2.

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup rice vinegar or 1/4 cup apple vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp raw sugar
1 tbsp fresh ginger
1 medium carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1/4 sweet yellow onion, roughly chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

iceberg lettuce, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces, for serving

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bless they heart.

Ahhh, the life of an immigrant. It has its ups and downs, let me tell you. As such, I myself am no stranger to either the up or the down, and sometimes the ups ain't always too positive neither. Like just now, thinking about it, the first up that popped into my uncaffeinated little noggin was "not having to listen to people talk".

Now that's not very nice is it. I mean of course I'm still having to hear the actual sound of the voices a-barrelin' through my calm and peaceful inner world, but in this case I am referring to the ability to "turn off" what you might could call "passive language comprehension" for those languages that ain't my beloved Inglese.

So if that's an up, Mr. Prince of Darkness, what are the downs like praytell???

Well the downs: these are the times that try men's souls, tell you what. I had one yesterday, a time that tried my soul that is. It's summer, right? Summer means certain things where I come from. Blisteringly hot car upholstery. Lightning. Swimming pools. Bees and other unpleasant insects galore. People saying "Shheeeweee, 's it hot enough for ye?" And so forth.

I guess it's these little cultural differences that makes the immigrant experience rich and rewarding and whatnot, but yesterday I went looking for a little piece of American-style summer, MY summer, and came up dry as a bone jacket. Well of course I'm talking about CORN ON THE COB PEOPLE. When are you going to get it through your gigantic globalized heads that this is what summer is about??? Well this and watermelon. Three grocery stores I went to. ZERO EARS OF CORN I CAME BACK WITH. I was fixin to pay Yurpean prices and everything. Good god amighty c'mon y'all git with the goldang program.

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day something or other.

Mirtazapine update here soon, but for now  It's actually day 106. Just a comment on how the ol' appetite stimulation is working out: pretty much fine. I'm rarely kneeling in front of an open refrigerator at midnight anymore. I am spending an inordinate amount of time looking at pictures of things I feel like I should be eating, but I'm not even sure if that's different than it used to be. I've also developed an unfortunate taste for ice cream, but I use an incredibly tiny spoon so it's under control.

As of a few weeks ago, "energy depletion" had actually become more of an issue than "appetite stimulation". It's been an issue since the beginning but now it's the number one issue: just like in the afternoon/evening a kind of a hollow feeling inside like I was made out of bendy straws. Caffeine seemed to have no discernible effect. Then a few days ago I started messing around with ginseng, and this seems to be doing something good. Though I need to check on the dosage to make sure it's something like what normal people take.

Also new in the last three days or so: especially great sleep, and of a pretty reasonable duration. 15mg mirtazapine at 9:45pm; 1mg of melatonin at 11pm or so, asleep by 11:30, awake at 7:30 or 8am feeling great. Weird. Weight? I was back up to my pre-mirtazapine mystery weight thanks to repeated daily doses of beer and pizza but now seem to be back down a kilo or two. Trying to officially drop into the weight class below this one, a number which I may share with you once it happens. Oh yeh: I'm off alcohol for some weeks.

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weiner in trouble again.

Above: irresistible fun on the TV. Below: today's leftovers of this (caramel chicken, spicy cabbage salad, coconut brown rice), sporting the usual "green scatter" on top that makes everything we cook look the same regardless of what genre we're cooking in.

lìfè ốf thè mìnd.

In tribute to the heat, I watched Barton Fink last night, good stuff.

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Mara and I both have our chompers dialed in for Vietnamese food, so that's what we're going to cook for a day or two, though I'm not sure exactly what that means: at the moment I only know about five or so Vietnamese things: phở; gỏi cuốn (basil rolls); caramel catfish; bánh mì, and chả giò (fried spring rolls). And of course nước chấm, or "anything sauce" because it's good on anything. Six. And bánh xèo. Seven.

Still, it's not much. So we turn to mister Internet for some inspiration. 

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LATER: Shit, man...home run for me. If you've ever liked som tam, this is essentially it but easier. My adaptation is based on this. I also made Caramel Ginger Chicken, based on this, also very good but the below slaw is exactly what I was in the mood for. I think you could even add some properly-fried tofu to this and by the next day it would be quite good if breath-mauling picnic food.

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goi bap cai (spicy cabbage salad).

1 or 2 green or red Holland chiles, or serrano chiles, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 tbsp sugar
1 pinch salt
2 to 3 tbsp Thai fish sauce
5 to 6 tbsp rice vinegar

5 or 6 cups shredded Napa or Chinese cabbage (spitskool will do nicely)
1 large carrot, peeled and finely shredded (I bought mine pre-shredded cause I'm a little bitch)
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped fresh cilantro and/or mint leaves
1/2 cup roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

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rasslin' scenarios and other things lit'rary.

OK, that's enough summer, thank you, it's been great!!! Yesterday was really fucking hot, like 88°F, and very little was helpful in terms of making anything better. I almost went into the ocean. Instead I consoled myself with some more sardines: fried with very little coating and served with a slice of lemon, some pickled cabbage, and a sauce they call ravigote, which is usually like a tartar sauce but this was more like a creamy dill mayonnaise. Whatever you call it, it's not really the star of the show, the fish are, and though they're not much to look at, they were yet again pretty perfect beach food.

Also, as you can see above, I kind of fucked up my "avoiding the crowds" schedule yesterday by getting to Central Station and not being 100% sure I turned the coffeepot off. After spending a good 10 minutes weighing the pros and cons of A) missing my train, going all the way back home and losing an hour of precious morning beach time only to discover that sigh of course I turned the coffee off, versus B) spending my day at the beach imagining flames billowing out of our apartment window, the cats dying of smoke inhalation and the entire building burning down...I chose the former. It's really a no-win situation once the image of the still-on coffeepot pops into your head: if you don't go back and check, you are most certainly inviting the attention of The Great Magnet. I probably don't need to tell you that the coffeepot was, as expected, not on.

Today: I have rarely looked to forward to a thunderstorm as much as I am looking forward to the one forecast for this afternoon.

hit me.

On my way through Westerpark to see Filmhuis Cavia's showing of an actual 16mm celluloid copy of Blue Velvet at the Buurtboerderij, complete with speed and focus problems. An unexpected bonus was the ambient stereo environment provided by a herd of live goats several meters away and a house music festival off in the distance. All this sonic goodness was followed by a gig I didn't say yes to, which is still a hard thing to do (not saying yes), but during the movie gentle waves of gratefulness kept lapping at my feet while I focused on nothing else but the story in front of me.

severe weather alert.

People say that Zandvoort is too shittily overcrowded to enjoy in the summer. I don't know. It's what, €6.20 round trip (unless you value airco and an absence of moaning, sticky children, then it's €10.40 for first class)? Seems like if you leave your house at 8:45am, have your toes in the sand and your nose in a book by 9:45am, have a pile of (sadly unphotographed) fresh fried sardines and a beer (or two) at noon, and then head home at 1:30pm just as everyone (and I do mean everyone) else is showing up....you could do worse. And then after a quick nap you can, you know, get some work done if that's your kind of thing.